I've been a bit swamped lately. I won't bore you with all the things I have on my plate at the moment, but trust me, it's a lot. So this post is kind of a jumbled mess with less than stellar photos, but here you go.

Big news: Riley now has two teeth!! Her second one FINALLY broke through the day after she turned 9 months old. AND, I think I saw one of her top teeth under the gums! Now, I can't be sure, as Riley gives me about half a second before she sticks her tongue out or clamps her mouth shut. Oh yeah, and that tongue? Constantly out these days.

Also, Riley has really discovered climbing. She's going to figure out how to get up on the couch in no time, just you watch. I made the mistake of leaving the bumbo seat next to the couch while I went into the kitchen, and came back out to see this... it's blurry because I was trying to snap a quick shot before she fell over, but you get the idea...

For a while now Riley has been obsessed with that white rug you see. She loves to suck on it (gross) and run her hands along it. Well, she's discovered something else she can do with it now too...

You should've seen her face when she realized she no longer has to bend down to suck on the carpet. The carpet CAN COME TO HER. Oh the little joys in life. And her other favorite thing to do these days?? Torment poor little Taylor. She climbs on him, grabs him, steals his toys (which, to be fair, are actually her toys), yells at him, and just will not leave him alone. Luckily, he doesn't really seem to mind.

Oh oh I forgot to add, we had Riley's 9 month check-up yesterday, and she is now in the 85% percentile for height (28.5 inches) and 60-something percentile for weight (18.5 pounds). My baby is getting tall. And she's growing up. Honestly, when I saw this next picture, I had to stop for a minute and be like "where has my baby gone???" She just looks so toddler-like!

She's obsessed with that ottoman by the way. It's wicker and she loves the texture so it's one of her new fave things to pull up on. Her little mind is like a sponge lately, she is discovering something new and doing something new every single day. She loves crawling races, and she's discovered she is tall enough to see over the arm of the couch and peek at whoever is sitting on the other side (awesome), and also figured out she can climb out of her high chair (not awesome). She splashes so hard that water flies across the room when she's in the tub. She all of a sudden hates getting put in her car seat and cries as soon as I close the door, but is happy as can be once we get moving. She will almost always stop crying if I sing to her. She saves her biggest, loudest, cutest laughs for her daddy. She loves the washer and the dryer. She loves to "brush her teeth" by herself, but is less than cooperative when we try and do it for her. She still cries every single time we finish reading stories. She's in love with the ipad, and has her biggest tantrum ever when we put it away. Peek-a-boo is the best form of free entertainment in the entire world. She's reverted back to sleeping with a paci, and I am not happy about it (this happened because I started giving it to her again when she was sick and I was desperate to do anything to just get the poor miserable baby to sleep, and apparently it jump started the bad habit... oops). She fake coughs all the time and thinks it's so so funny. She turns the pages of books and laughs when we get to her favorite parts. She will stop whatever she's doing and crawl across the room if we bribe her with a book. She loves knocking over towers we build. She loves shaking things that make noise and will do so on command. She loves eating shoes. She's totally fun and super happy most of the time.

standing independently- she has stood for about 5 seconds independently a number of times, not holding on to anything!

climbing- she will climb over things to get to where she wants to go... over pillows, furniture, toys, our legs

pulling up to stand- she does it for real now, totally independently, using anything and everything all the time. Hence the reason we need a spotter for our monthly pictures...

she gives kisses! If you ask for a kiss and put your face close to hers, she opens her mouth and plants a big wet one on ya. She even gave Taylor a kiss on the mouth one day!

understands more than we were giving her credit for. If I ask her, "Where's daddy?" or "Where's mama?" she'll look at the right person. If I ask her if she wants milk she crawls over to me to be picked up so I can nurse her.

loves "walking"- the day after she turned 8 months, she pulled herself up to stand using one of her toy bins, and started pushing it around the hardwood floor, using it as a walker. She is also getting sooo fast walking around holding on to our fingers.

definitely knows her name, and knows what "no" means, although doesn't necessarily listen

sleeping: what a roller coaster this month has been sleep-wise. She stopped sleeping through the night (sigh), and for a little while she was waking 3-4 times again!! I think it was a combination of teething, new milestones achieved, a bit of separation anxiety, and her very first cold. Luckily we seem to be getting back to only waking once at night which will hopefully turn into sleeping through the night again!

still naps twice a day usually from 8:30-10 and 1:30-3 and bedtime is 6:45/7:00

she gives high fives!

Got her first cold this month. Poor poor baby! Constant whining, short naps, lots of waking up in the night, crying every time I left the room... not good. Poor baby was all blocked up and couldn't breathe!

eating: what a change this month! Riley eats 3 full meals a day, usually she eats a full large jar of baby food for each meal. She loves yogurt and will eat a whole adult sized one herself in about 30 seconds.

is still absolutely obsessed with reading books

baby signs: She definitely understands eat, more, milk, and book, but doesn't sign them to us. I'm thinking in the next month it will probably really click for her.

she LOVES to play on our bed with us. Mark and I lay on the bed with her and play peek-a-boo and she crawls around and buries herself under the covers, and laughs and laughs like it's the best thing in the world.

responds to "ta." now for all you non-NZ people, "ta" is like the quintessential NZ word. Mostly it means thank you, but is also is used as a command for babies... like we say "Riley, ta" if we want her to give us something she has. When I want her paci, for example, I put my hand out, say "Riley, ta" and 90% of the time she spits it out into my hand.

mimics us big time- sticking out our tongues blowing raspberries, banging on things, as well as copying certain sounds.

is no longer afraid of strangers in the least. We went to a playgroup and she barely even knew I was there, she was too busy exploring and stealing toys from other babies!

still has only ONE tooth! The second bottom one is sooo close although I've been saying that for over a month now, so who knows.

I think the "one-tooth wonder" look is kind of cute on her, don't you?

She also loves it when Mark throws her up in the air, and she laughs and laughs and laughs while he does it.

Some days I still can't believe she's mine. I just want to swoop her up and kiss her all day long! Happy 9 months!

Today, Riley and I had a great day. She was like my little sidekick. We went to Wellington Botanical gardens, and played, and ate leaves, and enjoyed the sunshine. We had a picnic lunch, we snuggled, we laughed, we had fun. We looked at flowers and stared up into the sky. Or, the tree branches.

We had a great time. And Riley's favorite part? Definitely eating the leaves.

Just pretend like those socks are the same color, k?

You've heard the phrase, "monkey see, monkey do," right? Well, that's Riley's motto at the moment. We stick our tongue out? She sticks hers out. We bang on her high chair? She bangs on her high chair. We blow raspberries?....

So there's a lot of raspberry blowing going on around here these days. But anyway, I got a little sidetracked from the original purpose of this post. Riley and I had a great time today. We explored and played outside with leaves and twigs. We roamed around the house, we read books, we played together, and basically ignored all her toys all day long. And my child has a lot of toys. Way too many toys, in fact. You see, sometimes I get all toy happy, and think about all the cool new toys there are out there, and how much fun we'd have playing with them with Riley.

But here's the thing. Having toys is great, and Riley does play with them when they're out there. But, I think I like it better when she doesn't have toys. When there aren't any toys, she explores, and seeks out things to play with. She crawls around, she pulls to stand, she goes from room to room. She finds things that become toys for her. It also forces me to facilitate activities with her. We go for walks, or go to the park or beach. We read books, we sing songs. We play games and I teach her things. And that just seems so much better than plopping her down on the floor to play with a bunch of plastic toys.

So today, I came up with a plan, largely inspired by Sarah, over at Becoming Sarah. First, I bagged up a whole bag of toys that either are (1) too baby-ish (2) kind of lame or (3) we have duplicates of. They are getting donated to people who need toys way more than our little Riley bug. Then, I sorted through the remaining toys, and divided them into 4 piles. There's about 5-6 toys in each pile that are each sufficiently different. I put them in bins, and we'll have one bin of toys out at a time. So Riley only has 5-6 toys out at a time, and we'll rotate the bins to keep them fresh and exciting. Less clutter for everyone, less over-stimulation and toy madness for Riley.

And with fewer toys, I get to spend more time coming up with fun activities for this little face. And I'm liking it a whole lot I tell ya.

I was kind of disappointed I didn't participate in Scavenger Hunt Sunday this week, so I thought I'd at least try a couple other photo challenges!

First, the paper mama's theme is GREEN.

Then, I've never done this one before, but over at paper heart camera it's touch-up tuesday. I had a newborn shoot last weekend, and both the shooting and editing of newborn photos is new to me. Here's the SOOC image.

This was taken on day one when baby just would NOT sleep! It's a bit dark, and her skin was really red and splotchy, and peeling. I increased brightness and exposure, and then ran the coffee shop's baby powder room action on it, which allowed me to remove some of the redness of her skin, lighten up and smooth out her skin tones, and sharpen her eyes. Here's the end result.

Life lately has been busy, to say the least. And we're still a bit sick over here. Riley's cold seems to come in waves... one second she's totally fine, and then all of a sudden she's full of snot and can't breathe. Luckily she seems to be sleeping MORE as a result, not less, and she seems to be getting better every day. Although she did manage to pass her cold on to Taylor, so I have been taking care of TWO sick babies for the past couple days. But being sick didn't seem to slow them down even a bit.

These babies don't sit still for 2 seconds!

In fact, the only way to get them to sit still is to strap them into their seats to feed them.

But that doesn't last long and then they're back at it. Take a look at where that pink shoe starts, and where it ends up...

As you can see, today Riley was especially determined to get into trouble. She figured out she can stand on her tip toes to get to things previously out of reach.

March 13- Just capturing Riley's favorite part of the day (bath time) with her favorite bath toy. Sometimes she looks quite ferocious eating that poor little octopus...March 16- Riley and I had a picnic at the park!March 15-Riley protests me elevating her bouncer by lifting her legs and refusing to touch the floor. Silly baby.March 14- This is a daily occurrence, Riley absolutely destroying her alphabet mat.March 17- I told Mark I wanted to get a picture of him holding Riley up over his head, and this is what he did. Not exactly what I had in mind, but still photo-worthy, I'd say.March 18- I had my very first maternity shoot! The little peanut did not sleep the entire time, so we did another shoot the following day, which went much better (sleep-wise). But we got some good shots of her wide awake at least!

It seems no matter how hard we try, we cannot keep Riley clean when feeding her. She finds some way to make a huge mess. Mostly this involves either putting her fingers in her mouth, getting food on her hands, and then rubbing them all over her forehead/eyes/hair. Without fail. Every time. And she screams when we try to wipe her face. Every time. Wonder how we'll ever take her to eat in a restaurant??

Well, at least she's enjoying her solid foods these days! She eats a TON now! She went from eating like maaaaybe 1-2 little jars of food a day to eating 3-5 a day! And she eats vegetables and meats, and tons of finger foods, she's almost perfected the pincer grasp (okay, maybe not perfected, but she can pick up little items and feed herself pretty successfully).

Remember how I said I had my first newborn shoot today? Well, it did not go exactly as expected. Who am I kidding, it went nothing like I had hoped. I was there for almost 2 hours and the little peanut didn't sleep AT ALL! And she cried for about the last hour! We decided to call it a day and try again tomorrow morning, so we'll see how it goes. The good thing is, I managed to get some good shots of her with her parents (awake, of course), so today was no a complete fail! It also taught me I have a lot to learn about newborn photography. I have a lot to reflect on and share, but I'm not sure if this blog is really the best place to do it. Maybe after tomorrow, we'll see. Would you be interested in hearing some of the things I learn on some of my photography adventures?